What Happens to Dog Waste After We Scoop It?

How We Handle Waste at Every Visit

The process is straightforward: we scoop all waste we find in your yard, double-bag it in compostable bags, and place the tied bags in your outdoor garbage bin. That's the last step before city pickup takes over.

We never leave bags propped against your fence, tucked behind a bush, or piled outside your bin. The waste leaves your usable yard space entirely at the end of every visit.

Why We Use Compostable Bags

Standard plastic bags take 400–1,000 years to break down in a landfill. Compostable bags — the kind we use — are made from plant-based materials and break down in roughly three to six months under managed conditions. In a standard landfill setting, breakdown is slower than in a commercial compost facility, but still significantly faster than conventional plastic.

The choice of bag matters more when waste ends up in environments where breakdown speed has an environmental impact. In a sealed landfill, the difference is meaningful but not dramatic. The bigger gain from using compostable bags is reducing the volume of persistent plastic that accumulates in waste streams over time.

What Portland's Waste Pickup System Says About Pet Waste

Portland Metro's waste guidelines are clear: pet waste belongs in the garbage bin — not the yard debris bin, not the compost bin. The yard debris system is not designed to process pet waste, and including it can contaminate the compost stream that otherwise gets processed into soil amendment used throughout the region.

Flushing unbagged pet waste is also an EPA-approved disposal method. Portland's wastewater treatment system is designed to handle fecal material and filters out pathogens effectively. This is actually more environmentally sound than landfill disposal in some contexts — it just requires transporting waste to a toilet, which isn't practical for yard-scale cleanup.

What We Never Do

A few disposal practices that are unfortunately common with lower-quality services:

• Dumping bagged waste in public trash cans along the route — this exceeds the capacity of those bins and is a violation of Portland park rules
• Leaving bags outside the bin on top of a lid — rain can open bags and wash waste into runoff
• Using standard non-biodegradable plastic bags to reduce cost
• Burying waste in the client's yard — this doesn't remove the contamination, it relocates it into the soil

None of these are practices we use. We've built our disposal process to keep waste contained, off your property, and out of Portland's water system.

Why This Matters for Portland's Environment

Portland's stormwater system connects directly to local waterways — the Willamette, the Columbia tributaries, Johnson Creek, Fanno Creek. Waste that isn't properly collected and disposed of doesn't just decompose in your yard. Rain events carry it into storm drains, and from there into the river.

Proper disposal — bagged, binned, picked up by city haulers — is how pet waste stays out of that system. It's the simplest environmental step a dog owner can take, and it's what we do at every single visit.